Change your Thoughts and Change Your Life - Part 2 (episode 296-2)
You were given the gift of choice.
There is power in that and sometimes we don’t recognize the importance of how we use it. Megan German believes through time and practice we can release victim mentality, turn the fear down, and clean up our thoughts. You can shrink or expand. That is your choice.
She is exercising her choice and wants to work with women in ‘becoming’ (her favorite word). She will be building a coaching business around how women see their bodies. Doesn’t that sound like a much needed thing? Megan wants us to take care of them, to improve our relationship with them, and to love them.
Megan German is our guest this week for Permission to Want More: What’s Next and What’s Left. This is part two of our conversation.
I absolutely want to encourage everyone to give themselves permission to improve their relationship with their body, because it can only benefit your life in more ways than you realize.
— Megan German
But Do You Want to Keep Them?
Thoughts from Change Your Thoughts and Change Your Life
As you heard, Megan will be specializing in a woman’s relationship with her body. That is what she wants to coach on. As for me, you may have gleaned that I would like to encourage women ‘of a certain age’ make the most of their remaining years. So something along the lines of, becoming all you were meant to be, which is the show’s tagline. As I’ve mentioned before I do not want to get to the end and wish I’d done more, been more. No thank you. And I want the same for you.
Can you get there through coaching? Maybe. It depends on you and the coach you choose. So, what is a coach and why do you need one? Or why would you want one? Here’s a reminder of what a coach is. In the personal development space it is someone who uses structured dialogue, questioning, and action-oriented strategies to help individuals bridge the gap between their current state and their potential. Sounds like a good thing right?
Who doesn’t want to reach more potential? I can’t imagine anyone who would not want that. And the only thing I can think of that stands in our way is some kind of fear. We’ve talked about that a lot here and will undoubtedly continue to do so. It stops us, keeps us stuck, makes us settle. Since fear is our nemesis maybe we can try something that might help minimize it. Are you game?
The coach Megan and I are learning from teaches us something she calls ‘The Model’ to use with clients. It is a way to look at our thoughts and to recognize they produce feelings that cause us to show up in ways we might not always understand or even like. This is meant to increase our awareness and empower us. Check this out.
THE MODEL
Circumstance - these are the facts. They can be proven in a court of law and do not have any subjectivity added to them.
Thought - this is what you think about the circumstance. People typically don’t realize they are having thoughts about the circumstance but rather they blame the circumstance for how they feel.
Feeling - one word that describes how you feel as tied to the thought (not the circumstance - this is key).
Behavior (or action) - Because of your thought and how you feel you behave accordingly.
Result - these behaviors cause a result. Can you tie them back to the thought? That is the power of this work.
You blame the circumstance but it is actually your thought about the circumstance that causes what cascades from there. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, it can be difficult to sift through. I spoke with a woman today who was very familiar with coaching and she said she needed help ‘untangling’ her thoughts. I thought it was an insightful description.
There are some thoughts you want to keep. There are some you want to process, and it takes a bit of time. And then there are some that are hindering you, they don’t serve you, they keep you bound. You play them over and over again like when a needle gets stuck in a groove and stays there, not moving ahead.
As I’ve had the opportunity to practice these skills I can see the value of this work. I’ve been using ‘the model’ on myself and I can see that staying stuck and reliving certain situations is only hurting me as I replay, swirl, and spend too much time in my head over the ‘should-a, could-a, would-a’ options.
It reminds me of the scene in Moonstruck when Cher slaps Nicolas Cage and says, Snap out of it. Yes, sometimes it’s exactly what we need to do (the ‘snap out of it’ part, not the literal slap). And a good first step is to figure out your thoughts and see if they are the ones you want to keep. Maybe you want a coach to help you untangle it all. I know a lot of good ones.
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles...by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
— Mark Twain, he gets it
